In developed countries, Vaccination from COVID-19 is gaining momentum, and the question is increasingly relevant: what’s next? Will the boundaries open and how much can the emergence of new coronavirus options can prevent? Is it far to collective immunity, and whether the world will be able to return to normal life earlier than the effective medicine will be found from coronavirus?
These questions set the Russian BBC service.
In the JAMA Medical Community, published in late July, the article provides possible scenarios for the development of a pandemic. Four possible scenarios described in the work “are a spectrum of potential interchanges that the COVID-19 epidemic can be resolved.
Scenario First – complete eradication (Eradication). It provides that the doctors will be able to finally erase COVID-19 from the face of the Earth, as it is almost half a century ago, it happened with a natural smallpox virus. You can repeat this success only under one condition. Immunity (both after vaccination and after the suffered disease) should be strong and long – so that it protects against re-infection and at the same time prevented further transmission of infection. In the case of COVID-19, there are few hopes – and taking into account the ongoing mutations of the virus, the option of full deliverance from it “may be too ambitious even as a mental experiment, not to mention that putting it on the basis of the health strategy.”
“more realistic task for short-term perspective” the authors call the expulsion of infection (elimination), that is, a temporary decrease in the number of infections in a particular country to zero due to mass vaccination and strict system of restrictive measures – in fact, the complete closing of boundaries and isolation from external world.
The third scenario – life with the virus (cohabitation) – proceeds from the fact that the developed vaccines (and rather their future modifications) will continue to protect only from the severe course of COVID-19 and death. In such conditions, where there is a lot of vaccinated, the virus will cease to represent mortal danger and in fact COVID-19 will turn into a seasonal cold.
Of course, sometimes grafts will be sick – by reducing common immunity, natural fall with the time of the level of antibodies or new virus mutations. However, most of the population at any time will be fairly protected, so that large-scale outbreaks of hard diseases can be avoided.
and finally, the fourth scenario is a large-scale intake (conflagrament). This option is most likely if a significant part of the population of the planet remains unvited – whether due to the problem with the availability of vaccine, medical contraindications, low immune status or just personal reluctance. In this case, the virus will continue to spread rapidly – and therefore, and mutate.